1. Field of the Invention
Apparatus for skinning poultry carcasses or parts thereof, particularly breast portions gained by a cross-cut extending substantially perpendicularly to the plane of symmetry and transeversely through the backbone between the lower and upper extremities, in which portions the upper extremities have been removed, using a skinning tool comprising a pair of toothed rollers with meshing, toothed webs and driven to rotate in opposing directions.
2. Prior Art
At present both autarchic apparatuses and those integrated into processing lines are used, in which the skinning tool comprises a pair of oppositely rotating, driven, cylindrical, toothed rollers with meshing, toothed webs of coarse pitch or steep threads. For skinning purposes the poultry carcasses are brought into contact with the meshing gap of said toothed rollers, so that the skin is removed by continuous drawing in. However, it is disadvantageous that the skinning process often does not take place in a spontaneous manner and instead tool engagement is frequently only possible through turning on edge and turning over the poultry carcass. The reason for this is that the conveying meshing gap is set back with respect to the bearing surface of the poultry carcass defined by the common tangent plane on the toothed rollers roughly by the amount of the radius of the toothed rollers and consequently the carcass must be deformed correspondingly in order to initiate the skinning process. It is also disadvantageous that during or bythis process the skin is destroyed, which counteracts the intention to use this skin as a continous, edible envelope or case for various food products.
An apparatus having the aforementioned functional elements is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,051. This apparatus used for removing the skin from turkey legs has two pairs of parallel, juxtaposed, cylindrical rollers with helically extending, toothed webs, which mesh with one another. The turkey legs are engaged on a pointed bar in such a way that the latter penetrates between the skin and the leg meat, the latter being above and the former below the pointed bar. Through further forcing onto the same, the turkey leg passes into the area of a conveyor arranged above the cylindrical roller pairs, which conveyor firstly conveys the turkey legs to a cutting mechanism for slitting the skin and finally to the cylindrical roller pairs. The skin flaps freed by said slitting and the penetration of the pointed bar pass into the meshing gaps between the cylindrical rollers, so that the skin is removed. Thus, once again no continuous skin envelope can be obtained.